Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

The Book: Hollow City

The Author: Ransom RIggs

The Publisher: Quirks Books, 2014

The Acquiring: Bought at Atlantic SuperStore for 40% off

My Thoughts: This is the sequel to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children which I’ve heard of but never read. Sometimes I do these things…

The author’s first name is Ransom, which I had not realized before right now. Yes! I love it. I hope it’s his real name  One day if I have children of my own, I wish to name my child an equally as awesome name.

At the beginning of the book, there is a series of photos of weirdly unusual children. They are photos of the characters. My first reaction was maybe the writer is horrible at character descriptions which caused me to prejudge his writing.. in a negative way. I was wrong, once I’d read about a particular character, I simply returned to the pictures to compare my imagination to.. I guess.. the writer’s imagination, and they were pretty much exactly how I pictured them. So LESSON LEARNED: don’t judge a book’s ability by the pictures in the beginning.   

I have to say that I did enjoy this book, it was a quick read. It was weird and different. I just never grew attached to any of the characters. I did not despise or was annoyed by any of them, I just never felt kindred to them.  Maybe I would feel different if I had read the first book.

The Lowdown: This book picks up where the first one left off though it does a good job at bring the reader up to speed with the situation. The peculiar children are in row boats escaping the island many of them had called home after being attacked and sought out for their magical and unusual talents by these things called wights who are in cahoots with the german’s. Miss Peregrine, the children’s magical teach/ guardian which they call their ymbryne, is transformed into a bird and they are in search of a ymbryne that can help her change back. The main character Jacob is of course the unwilling leader/hero that has been “chosen” due to his heritage to help save the other particular children. He has his grandfather’s talent of being able to see these evil monster things called hollows that the wights use to hunt the peculiar children. The problem is that they are in a time loop in which has brought them to England, 1940 with WWII ranging on. Many of the other ymbrynes and loops have been captured and now occupied by the wights. Their only hope to finding a ymbryne and a loop that has not been captured by these wight thingys, is to go to London, which of course is being bombed to pieces.

The Goodreads Rating: I first gave it 3 stars on goodreads but then I thought I was being a little harsh so I gave it 4 stars then I decided to change my mind again and give it 3 stars. I don’t know why but this book is just an okay read for me. I liked it but I had no real connection to the story. Maybe I should read the first book…